I cover demographic, social and economic trends around the world. I am the R.C. Hobbs Professor of Urban Studies at Chapman University in California and executive editor of newgeography.com. My forthcoming book, The New Class Conflict, will be published by Telos in September.

11/30/2011 @ 12:07PM17,410 views

Is Suburbia Doomed? Not So Fast.

This past weekend the New York Times devoted two big op-eds to the decline of the suburb. In one, new urban theorist Chris Leinberger said that Americans were increasingly abandoning “fringe suburbs” for dense, transit-oriented urban areas. In the other, UC Berkeley professor Louise Mozingo called for the demise of the “suburban office building” and the adoption of policies that will drive jobs away from the fringe and back to the urban core.

Perhaps no theology more grips the nation’s mainstream media — and the planning community — more than the notion of inevitable suburban decline. The Obama administration’s housing secretary, Shaun Donavan, recently claimed, “We’ve reached the limits of suburban development: People are beginning to vote with their feet and come back to the central cities.”

Yet repeating a mantra incessantly does not make it true. Indeed, any analysis of the 2010 U.S. Census would make perfectly clear that rather than heading for density, Americans are voting with their feet in the opposite direction: toward the outer sections of the metropolis and to smaller, less dense cities. During the 2000s, the Census shows, just 8.6% of the population growth in metropolitan areas with more than 1 million people took place in the core cities; the rest took place in the suburbs. That 8.6% represents a decline from the 1990s, when the figure was 15.4%.

Nor are Americans abandoning their basic attraction for single-family dwellings or automobile commuting. Over the past decade, single-family houses grew far more than either multifamily or attached homes, accounting for nearly 80% of all the new households in the 51 largest cities. And — contrary to the image of suburban desolation — detached housing retains a significantly lower vacancy rate than the multi-unit sector, which has also suffered a higher growth in vacancies even the crash.

Similarly, notes demographer Wendell Cox, despite a 45% boost in gas prices, the country gained almost 8 million lone auto commuters in the past 10 years. Transit ridership, while up slightly, is still stuck at the 1990 figure of 5%, while the number of home commuters grew roughly six times as quickly.

In the past decade, suburbia extended its reach, even around the greatest, densest and most celebrated cities. New York grew faster than most older cities, with 29% of its growth taking place in five boroughs, but that’s still a lot lower than the 46% of growth they accounted for in the 1990s. In Chicago, the suburban trend was even greater. The outer suburbs and exurbs gained over a half million people while the inner suburbs stagnated and the urban core, the Windy City, lost some 200, 000 people.

Rather than flee to density, the Census showed a population shift from more dense to less dense places. The top ten population gainers among metropolitan areas — growing by 20%, twice the national average, or more — are the low-density Las Vegas, Raleigh, Austin, Charlotte, Riverside–San Bernardino, Orlando, Phoenix, Houston, San Antonio and Atlanta. By contrast, many of the densest metropolitan areas — including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston and New York — grew at rates half the national average or less .

It turns out that while urban land owners, planners and pundits love density, people for the most part continue to prefer space, if they can afford it. No amount of spinmeistering can change that basic fact, at least according to trends of past decade.

But what about the future? Some more reasoned new urbanists, like Leinberger, hope that the market will change the dynamic and spur the long-awaited shift into dense, more urban cores.

Density fans point to the very real high foreclosure rates in some peripheral communities such as those that surround Los Angeles or Las Vegas. Yet these areas also have been hard-hit by recession — in large part they consist of aspiring, working class people who bought late in the cycle. Yet, after every recession in the past, often after being written off for dead, areas like Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif., have tended to recover with the economy.

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You wrote:”‘We’ve reached the limits of suburban development: People are beginning to vote with their feet and come back to the central cities.’ Yet repeating a mantra incessantly does not make it true. Indeed, any analysis of the 2010 U.S. Census would make perfectly clear that rather than heading for density, Americans are voting with their feet in the opposite direction: toward the outer sections of the metropolis and to smaller, less dense cities. During the 2000s, the Census shows, just 8.6% of the population growth in metropolitan areas with more than 1 million people took place in the core cities; the rest took place in the suburbs. That 8.6% represents a decline from the 1990s, when the figure was 15.4%.”

You have confused two different issues, “willingness to pay” with “ability to pay”. While there may be plenty of people who are *willing* to buy homes very far from their work and pay for the transportation costs, the issue at hand is are there as many people *able* to make that desire a reality. People are not voting with their feet, as Mr. Obama puts it, because they necessarily want to but because they have to.

Do you think the creation of non auto dependent places within the burbs will take hold? What will we do with all the old cities with their broken infrastructure and decaying buildings? It seems the new burbs are built pretty cheap. Do you wonder how they will last with time? The burbs are hardly made for the Vitruvian values of firmness, commodity and delight. Joel, come to Baltimore and tell us how to redevelop — or should we just further abandon the city and move on out further into the green areas and chew up the watershed?

Urban planners and theoreticians pine for the days when the growth of populations are primarily in the cities.

The reality is that even if gas prices were to double from now, the couples starting a family will put up with anything to raise their children in an environment more suitable to children that any apartment complex or condos.

As people retire, you will get more retirees moving into condos, but from what I see, more retirement themed condos are being built in established suburbs, so regardless, the myth of people moving back into city cores are simply untrue.

You can simply consider the economics of home ownership, a modest three bedroom house in the suburbs with 2000 sq foot is still less than half the cost of a tiny cramped 1000 sq foot apartment in the suburbs of many major metropolitan areas.

It doesn’t matter how expensive gas gets, the housing cost difference alone is impossible to bridge, and when a couple is about to have a baby, just about the first thing they think about is a nursery room in a house with a lot more space than a city condo. This will never change, and no amount of urban planning can solve this.

The reverse is actually happening as well for offices and amenities. As the city cores become hollowed out with higher density apartments, the suburbs become more established, hospitals, supermarkets, and even high tech jobs are now moving into lower taxed areas in the suburbs.

The suburbs become larger towns ringing a city core that most suburban dwellers hardly ever visit anymore.

It is in our nature to seek more open space, and when a city grows too much, living spaces are more cramped and the urge to move out becomes too strong to ignore.

I live in a suburb of Atlanta. A very nice suburb. Our housing prices have not declined at all in the current real estate recession due to the demand from people who want to live in our area.

Why is the demand so high. We are a self-contained city, with no legal or financial relationship with the city of Atlanta. Property taxes run about 1% of the value of your house, and we gladly pay those taxes because they fund excellent public school, public safety and road improvement.

In contrast the Atlanta city public schools were recently the subject of a horrible scandal involving teachers holding “changing parties” where they changed the answers on students achievements tests so incompetent teachers could hold onto their jobs. Financial mis-management runs rampant in the cit of Atlanta, as does liberal political correctness.

I would no more move into the “urban core” than I would move to the Arctic circle. Both are environments which hold no appeal to me, and I suspect no appeal to everyone else who is trying to get a house in our area due to our great schools and public services (that are not very expensive to pay for).

The key question is how many people in your “very nice suburb” commute every day to Atlanta for their jobs. Put a different way, would this very nice suburb exist without Atlanta? I would suspect that if Atlanta disappeared tomorrow this suburb would disappear the following day. So it is probably not the “self-contained city” it imagines itself to be.

To maintain Atlanta, the city government needs to collect a certain amount of money, I would guess in the form of property taxes and sales taxes. I would further guess that those levels of taxes are much higher than the 1% property tax rate in the self-contained, very nice suburb. So all of those people who commute from the very nice suburb to Atlanta benefit from the higher taxes paid by those actually live in Atlanta but do not themselves pay for the service the City of Atlanta provides. For example, if the City did not pave the streets, it would be very hard for those suburban commuters to get to work.

I would suggest that the suburban commuters are enjoying the benefits of Atlanta without paying for the costs of Atlanta.

What would happen if the companies that these suburbanites worked at decided to move out of Atlanta and opt for an even smaller town past this suburban utopia? Atlanta would implode as it should. It is overtaxed. The companies would be more competitive and have happier employees. Who wants to go to a crime infested city?

THe NYT article mentioned in this article is PURE Agenda 21 propaganda. The ultimate goal of Agenda 21 is abolishment of private property rights where everyone is living in little boxes inside a high rise apt building with no garage space for cares. Transportation is by bicycle, public transportation and foot. They are called 5 minute neighborhoods so that people can be controlled. THese globalists don’t want you to have your single family home with your private backyard and your car where you can go anywhere anytime you please because those things represent freedom. This is pure BS

The first half of this article was a bit weak in its analysis I think considering the growth of suburban development really took off in the early 2000s and peaked as the decade went on. Therefore, suburban growth may have exploded until the bubble bursting in 2007/2008, but what is the pattern since then? To use the difference between 2010 and 2000 figures and imply straight-line growth in-between is a bit misleading, as there may have been a peak in the trendline somewhere in the middle there.

In fact, I remember a lot of people expecting Phoenix to move into the Top 5 largest cities in the US after the 2010 census because of its explosive growth in the 2000s, moving past rusting Philadelphia. When the final numbers came out, Philly remained in 5th place, edging out Phoenix. Leaders of both cities seemed shocked. Philly celebrated, Phoenix put off the official party until 2020. Yes Philly declined, but less than thought; Phoenix grew, but slower than expected. Was there a shift in growth patterns the second half of the 2010s? More time and data are needed to know.

That’s why the second half of the article is better as it raises some interesting points. Perhaps the movement of people isn’t one way or driven by one factor such as density. People are having second thoughts about the cookie-cutter approach to suburban developments as well as large, soulless urban core condos. Instead, as we have to think deeper about our spending choices (after all housing is an increasingly large percentage of spending to shrinking incomes), people may be looking for more bang-for-their buck: that is actual communities wherever they may be – from an up-and-coming inner-city neighborhood to a small town in the foothills.

There seems to be a conscious effor to ‘sell’ living in our cities as something beneficial if not sexy and cool. The truth is that there are pockets in almost any city that are desireable, but when young people have children, they overwhelmingly look to the suburbs to raise their family.

The interesting paradox is that there are now very significant home buying opportunities in the suburbs due to the foreclosure crisis. HUD has an FHA 203k rehab loan program to help people buy these properties and fix them up to suit their needs – all at below market costs, low interest rates and only 3.5% down payment.

There are 203kServices available and HUD 203k Consultants available to help people make decisions on these opportunities. Ironically these opportunities have existed in our cities but the property tax structure in the cities and crime stats continue to put our cities at a disadvantage although cities such as New York have addressed the crime and grime issue successfully.